


Montgomery

by MaggieScarborough



Category: None - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 02:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20613287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaggieScarborough/pseuds/MaggieScarborough





	1. Chapter 1

A cooling silence lay over the room in which I was able to hear the ticking of the Mahagoni clock in the entrance hall and even the breaking of bubbles in my water glass.  
"What did you say?", my mother asked coldly.  
That coldly that I had shivers running down my spine.  
She sat on the sofa opposed to me.  
One of those ridiculously expensive ones.  
It was held in the style of baroque.  
The material which coated the sofa was so over the top antique that it was nearly embarassing.  
The wood the sofa was made of was painted white.  
Just like most of the house. The mansion.  
I liked to call my mother some kind of parasite. She lived off of the money of my father.  
And that was all she ever did.  
She drove into the city or to malls and bought the most expensive clothes or chairs she could find. For herself.  
Every day she walked around in her expensive clothes and with her costly heirloom-earrings and pearl-necklaces.  
Even when there was no one visiting.  
Over the top tasteful. Overly expensive. Simply objectionable.  
She was a dreadful person.  
Kind to those people she thought could be useful someday and arrogant to those who she thought not worthy of her kindness. I was one of the last.  
I wasn't worth living.  
I wasn't worth living the life at her side.  
I wasn't good enough, not good enough at school, not friendly enough, not good looking enough.  
I was a disappointment. In her eyes.  
I looked at her, the cold grey irises of her eyes steered back at me.  
"I'm leaving.", I said.  
Her lips pressed together even harder, so her mouth formed only a thin, straight line.  
"You are definitely not", she said determinedly. She was angry. Very angry.  
But I just stared back at her. Silent. She knew that I'd go. She hoped that I'd go.  
But still she ordered me to stay here.  
Here in her over exaggerated friendliness.  
She wanted me to drown in it.  
And she knew that I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't stay with her anymore.  
I couldn't stand her hilarious looks anymore. And I had to go. So that's what I did.  
To tell the truth I had already packed my bag.  
A few clothes, my favorite book, my mobile phone, charger and hygienic articles.  
I didn't know what would happen to me and truth be told I didn't care.  
The only important thing was that I got away from here.  
Away from my mother, away from my father, who didn't see anything or anyone except for his work.  
I didn't want to go. And I couldn't stay. I was homesick.

Not the kind of homesickness everyone knows.  
Mine was different. I was homesick for something else. Not for my home or my room, not for my bed or family. I was homesick for the feeling of being loved.  
Being wanted. Being accepted.  
I don't know if you know that feeling but I do.  
I feel it. Every single day.  
And this was the reason why I went away.  
One reason was, of course, my mother. One reason was my father. But the thing that got the stone into rolling down the hill was this feeling.  
I heard that teenagers tend to let their feelings lead their decisions. That hormones go crazy and that they don't even know what they're doing.  
But this, this was different.  
Maybe it was because I never really got to see what love was. Of course I had seen it in movies or TV-shows, in books or at school.  
But I never got to experience it.  
Neither my father nor my mother cared about me when I was younger. I was a necessary bad because they both hoped that one day I would become a star in the walk of fame.  
A great, famous person. So that they could look down at me and say "Yes, that's all my doing".  
And now that I was older both of my parents were disappointed in me.  
I loved books, films and TV-shows. I played the violin. And I had no friends. I went to a prep school for over-rich snobs. I did everything my parents wanted.  
But still I wasn't good enough.

I had too bad grades. Not good enough.  
I played the violin too bad. Not good enough. I had no friends. Pathetic.  
My mother continued staring at me with her cold grey eyes. And I didn't know what else to say to her.  
'I hate you? How can one person be so cold hearted?'  
I didn't ask her. Instead I simply stood up and began walking. I went to the door which lead to the corridor and to my room. My mother didn't follow me. I don't know what she did but I believe she simply stared into the air.  
But I climbed up the stairs to my room and to my backpack, which was filled with the most important things I has.  
I had my shabbiest clothes already on.  
A two months old jeans and a Hollister shirt.  
I know that shabby is not a description that fit to those clothes but I didn't have anything else.  
And at that point in my life a two months old jeans was shabby to me.  
I took my bag from my bed and went down the stairs in my trainers.  
Walking to the front door I passed the door to the living room. While I was passing I saw that my mother hadn't moved one bit. Not a centimeter.  
She sat there, Lady Stoneheart. But I had to continue walking.  
I opened the door and breathed in deeply. The air was warm, it was summer. I heard the clicking of heels from behind me.  
My mother.  
So I began to walk faster. "Charlotte Ada Sophie Montgomery! Come back here this instant!", my mother began to shout nearly frantically.

But I continued walking. I couldn't go back. I didn't want to go back. I didn't have to go back.  
I don't know what I thought the outer world would be like, Gondor or Emerald City, but I would never find it.


	2. Chapter 2.1

"Where'd you wanna go, sweetheart?", asked Ian Coster.   
I only shook my head, my blonde queue went back and forth, which was a blessing for the temperature.   
"I don't know yet", I answered him.   
I stood next to his pickup truck.   
Because I wasn't old enough to drive yet, I had to go hitchhiking. 

Ian was ugly: his face was sunken in and shriveled. Stubbles came out of his skin all around his mouth, he wasn't shaved.   
The hair on his chest, which peeked out under the dirty white undershirt he wore, said it all.   
His stomach was round and full and merely had any space behind the wheel of his car.   
The light grey sweatpants were pulled down so far that I had to look at his underwear sometime.   
His icy blue eyes stared through me.   
I don't know if he took something or if was simply drunk.   
At any rate you could see it in his eyes. 

The truck too had seen its best days already.   
It was painted in a dark shade of brown and the paint and rust peeled off of the wall of the car. 

Ian only nodded. "C'mon in, li'l one", he said to me and nodded to the car door.   
So I got into the truck.   
It smelled disgusting.   
Like alcohol, cigarettes and vomit.   
My first instinct was to get out of the truck as soon as possible.   
But I couldn't, I had waited for hours to finally see a car come up the road.   
Another misfortune was that it was even hotter inside the truck   
It looked like the air conditioner was broken.

I looked at Ian and Ian looked at me.   
As if he'd wait for something.   
"So?", he asked me.   
I just looked at him in an irritated manner.   
"Well, who're you, girl!", he asked again, his accent so heavy that I needed time to understand what he meant.   
I didn't know how to answer his question. 

"I am Sophie", I answered him.   
"Ian", he said and gave me his thick, sweaty, shriveled hand. "Ian Coster", he added.   
I nodded. "Nice to meet you", I answered him.   
It really was. I was simply happy that I was gone.   
Gone from my mother. Gone from the oppression.   
Gone from the feeling of captivity.   
I know it sounds harsh, if I could make it sound nicer I would. But I can't. 

"What are ya doin' here?", he continued asking.   
I only stared at him silently. He nodded.   
"I get it", he said and started the engine.   
He smiled slightly and began to drive. 

We drove like this for what felt like eternity.   
To me it was like a drive into oblivion. Into Limbo.   
I didn't have anything to do. I wanted to begin again.   
And I had this chance now. I could go where I wanted.   
I was free. Smiling slightly I looked through the windshield.   
I had no idea what was coming and I didn't want to know.   
I lived in the Now.   
And for the first time in my life I actually felt alive. 

We stayed silent for a very long time.   
Simply staring at the horizon or the street, the building and the nature around us.  
It was an odd situation sitting there in a truck next to a complete stranger but after a while I even felt good.   
There was no clock in the truck and I didn't want to look at my phone so I don't know the actual time but an hour or so had passed.   
And then my driver began talking. 

Ian Coster was a friendly man. Friendly, but uneducated.   
He had the things he knew from TV shows.   
It's not a bad thing in principle but it depends on the show.  
And Ian told me everything.   
He was someone who either talked too much or too less.   
Sometimes I simply laughed or nodded. I was being polite. 

Every once in a while he asked me a few things, but I didn't answer most of his questions. 

We drove through some ghost towns. And passed dusty gas stations, in which wild animals had found their homes.   
The streets we passed were packed with dust.   
Half of the asphalt was flooded with it, the rest lay around the streets.   
The huts were run down, planks of wood lay around and most of the roofs were dilapidated.   
It was nearly frightening how passive those cities looked. 

It was nearly frightening how dead everything looked.   
No green in sight, just the brownish-yellow dust, for miles on end.   
Nothing but the black road and the yellow dust.  
Sometimes there were brown bushes or lonely farms, but it wasn't usual for that kind of region.   
Ian asked if I wanted a beer but I declined.   
I didn't use to drink. I don't normally drink. 

Ian was talking nearly all of the time.   
Talking about TV, about his favorite things to do. Which was reading his favorite book, that was also the only book he had in his house.   
He talked about his family, his wife and child. 

He didn't give his life story straight away but after a longer chitchat he told it to me.   
Ian was desperate to tell his life story to someone. Anyone. And I was as good as anyone.  
Some people just need to talk about their problems, careless if the other person wants to listen.   
It just feels good telling the story.   
And Ian had helt it in for years. 

The problem with Ian was that he lost his daughter at the age of eight.   
He was supposed to take care of her but he looked away for a minute, at least that's what he told me.   
His daughter was playing in the garden and ran onto the street when a truck came and ran her over.   
Ian realized when he heard the car horn.

When he looked up he could only see how his daughter flew over the car and fell to the ground.   
Ian never forgave himself for her death. And his wife didn't either.   
Ian told me that she left him after accusing him of killing their daughter.   
Ian never got over it. 

I realized later that most of the people I met on the streets were sick.   
Not sick with an actual illness, but in the head.   
Love-sick, traumatized, scared. And I was too.   
My mother made me sick. I felt the need for love, for happiness and for freedom.   
Which made me a sick person.   
But with Ian it was worse. 

While driving the truck he drank. Beer.   
He had a six pack of beer always on the backseat of his truck, he told me.   
Because he never felt good enough while he was not drunk.   
So he drank. Much. So that he could cope with his life. 

After the accident and his wife left the company he worked for decided that he wasn't working well enough anymore and they fired him.   
Without asking questions, one day he had a letter on his desk in which the company explained that he wasn't productive enough anymore. 

Which was true, because Ian was depressed.   
At least that seemed to be the reason.   
He didn't care about his exterior anymore. He didn't go to work in a suit anymore, but with anything he could find.   
He began to smell. He didn't tell me that he began to smell, but I figured. He told me that he stopped shaving daily and that he began to drink. 

Drinking made him happy, at least for a little while.   
And when the happiness stopped he continued to drink until he couldn't feel anything anymore.   
That's what I realized when I was with him. 

Ian asked me to stay with him during the drive to his house.   
And I said yes. I couldn't have thought of saying no, because I had no idea where we were going.   
All I know is that it frightened me.   
In this old smelly truck I realized for the first time that I was alone. That I had no one to help me.   
And so I accepted the help of the only person that wanted to help me out, Ian.   
He only smiled and nodded. 

I loved Ian for his discretion.   
He never asked anything that made me feel uncomfortable.   
He was nice and caring, even when he was drunk.   
But he was desperate. 

We arrived at his house after a two and a half hour drive. 

I wasn't happy about the long drive but I was happy to be gone.   
I felt ready. I felt as if I could conquer the world.   
But of course I couldn't.


	3. Chapter 2.2

Ian's house was as wrecked as the rest of him.  
The grass which he called a garden was as yellow as the dust on the road and the American flag in front of his house was hanging flatly down the mast.  
There was no wind, it was hot.

And his house looked scary.   
If I wouldn't have known better I would have said that the house was abandoned.

But I soon realized that it wasn't. We got out of the truck and went to the front porch of the house.  
It was made out of planks of wood and didn't look too solid. But he went in, after nearly breaking the door in.

"Always buckin'", he explained and went inside.  
In front of every window there were curtains.  
I frowned but followed. 

Inside the house it was dark, scary and cold.  
You'd think that since it was hot outside it would be warmer in the house but obviously it was not.  
It was quite chilly so the hair on my arms raised itself. I shivered and went into the room.   
To me it seemed like a motel room at first. 

A carpet floor led to a door.   
I didn't know what was behind it but it looked demolished. To our right was a tiny door which led to a tiny room, the bathroom. It, too, looked demolished but it looked worse than the door. The floor and the walls were made of yellowed tiles. There were strains of mud everywhere and the mirror was cracked.   
I was startled by so much careless behavior.

My mother used to clean, or rather let people clean, the house every day and every piece in the house had its place.   
But here it was the opposite. 

Even in the tiny entrance room there were bottles riled up on the wall. Beer bottles.   
Some stood there proudly, others were cracked or lying on the ground. In between there were beer cans lying smashed carelessly on the carpet. 

I held my breath as I continued walking.   
I was afraid that if I breathed in I would die on the spot.   
I don't want to sound mean but Ian was a disgusting man. He was kind, but disgusting.

I watched him walk into his home, he was careful not to smash a bottle while walking.   
He pushed the door open and revealed the living room.   
Finally breathing in I realized that the smell wasn't that bad. It smelled musty and like alcohol. 

The air was drowned in alcohol.   
The living room was tiny, about thrice the size of his bathroom.   
Apart from the beer bottles the room was neatly tidied.   
The couch was old and the leather looked fat, but the blanket and pillows on it all had their place.   
The remote button to the old TV lay neatly on the armrest of the couch.

The brown of the leather didn't fit to the carpet floor at all, it had a pattern of red and white dots on it.   
The TV itself was old, it wasn't a flatscreen and it looked like it had a long and exhausting life behind it.   
The buttons on the TV were pushed so many times that you could even see it from afar.   
On the wall there was a tiny window, which was also coated by curtains. 

"I know it's not much, but, ya know. It's mine", Ian told me. "'Ts all I have", he added. 

I nodded and smiled slightly.  
Looking around the room once again.   
The curtains were a dark green, a muddy mix of green and brown.   
All in all most colors didn't fit together at all.   
Together with the empty beer bottles it was a grotesque scenario. 

Ian himself was grotesque.   
He seemed like an old and fat version of Linus from the Peanuts.  
The mud gathering around him like a crowd.   
I smiled slightly thinking about it.   
I used to watch the Peanuts while I grew up.   
It always made me feel better.  
Not just when I was a little child.

"I think it looks perfect", I said to Ian, looking back at him.   
He smiled at me and shook his head.  
"It lost that long ago", he said, his eyes focussing on the couch.   
Why was it tidy while the rest of his house was not?   
I didn't mean what I said.   
The house was far from being perfect. 

All those beer bottles scared me.   
Ian scared me.  
His backstory, his looks.  
But I knew he needed the company.   
And I needed a place to stay.   
At that moment I felt how desperate we both were.

I was desperate to finally become myself, my own, self deciding personality, and he was desperate to be everyone but himself.   
Because he couldn't stand himself anymore. 

And I realized how bad he felt.   
For everything he did, or he thought he did.  
Ian was a broken soul.   
And he expected me to fix it. 

I stayed with Ian for a few days.  
He was nice, always talking but I didn't mind.  
I was silent most of the time.   
And he didn't mind either.   
But he was trying to make my stay as good as possible.

He did everything he thought I wanted, he made me breakfast, put lunch and dinner in the microwave and always asked me for my opinion.   
Most of the time I didn't have any. 

I realized how sick my mother had made me.   
I was always thinking about her.   
In the back of my head I always asked myself what she would think of everything.  
Of me now, of the things Ian asked me, of my behavior.

Most of the time I gave Ian an answer I thought he'd wanted to hear. To make him feel better.   
But I didn't feel better.   
I thought that with running away it would help me get over it but it didn't.  
My mother was always on my mind.  
I just couldn't stop thinking about her. 

About the things she said.   
About what she would say if she were here.   
I felt like a modern version of Norman Bates.  
I mean she didn't talk to me in my mind but I would always ask myself what she would say.   
So it was quite similar.

I didn't want to think about her but it seemed like I just couldn't stop.   
So every time I thought about her I would pinch the skin of my thighs with my fingernails.   
It hurt and I immediately thought of the pain.

Every time I went to the toilet or to bed I could see that my thighs were coated in deep purple dots.   
That's where I pinched myself.   
Ian watched TV together and we didn't go out of the house much.   
They next supermarket was miles away so we had to drive one and a half hours to get there.  
We usually watched TV, both sitting on the couch, feet leaning on the coffee table in front of it and arms folded in front of us. Ian used to laugh every once in a while and say some things. I stayed silent. 

"The millionaire family Montgomery is fearing the worst after their daughter Charlotte disappeared four days ago", a reporter of the news show we were watching said.  
I breathed in deeply as I saw a picture of me light up on the screen.   
It took them four days to finally go to the police. 

"The girl went missing and hasn't been seen anywhere since the day she went out of her house. 'She went out, I didn't ask her why. We are so close, you know. I didn't have to ask where she went. And she would always come back home!', her mother, the wife millionaire Dr. James Montgomery, told the police.", said the reporter. 

From next to me I saw Ian staring at me.   
Not saying a word.   
I looked down at my thighs and fought the urge of pinching myself again. Ian was watching. 

"That's you, ain't it?!", Ian said softly. I didn't know what he thought of me now.   
"That's not me.", I argued. Shaking my head.  
It wasn't me. That person on TV wasn't me.   
It was the person my parents wanted me to be. 

I was surprised that my parents even wanted me back.   
But maybe a staff member noticed and asked them. And that's why they cared.   
Because the others noticed. 

Ian looked at me, shaking his head and sitting up on the couch. Our comfortable round was over.   
I continued to stare at the TV screen. 

"You gotta go back", Ian broke the silence.  
I only shook my head vehemently.   
I would never go back. Never.   
"Ya gotta go!", he said again, staring me down with his eyes which were underlined by a deep shade of blackish blue. 

"They're searchin' for ya!", he continued and I finally looked up at him. Sighing. "I won't!", I said back at him, looking into his eyes.   
"They've got a hella lotta money", he argued. "'Mean you could do anythin' ya wanted ta", he added. 

I sighed and stared at the ground.  
I used to cry every once in a week and sitting here on the couch, thighs blue and stood on the coffee table I felt like crying too. 

I shook my head again, feeling tears at the brim of falling in my eyes.   
He couldn't do that to me.  
He couldn't be so gruesome to ask me to go back there again. Everything was better than there. 

Living with a drunk, fetid idiot in a house full of mud and alcohol was better than there.   
"I'm not going back", I declared again. "And you can't make me!", I added.

"What the fuck can be that bad that ya don't wanna go back there?", asked Ian.   
It sounded angry. He was never angry. 

I only stared at him.   
In my four days living with Ian I had only spoken about less than a 100 words.  
I was allowed to sleep on the couch, Ian had gave me a blanket and his pillow, and we lived together, him talking and me listening.  
I wouldn't say that it was perfect, it was far from that, but I liked it.

He never demanded anything from me. Until now.   
"God damnit, girl! Open your fuckin' mouth!", he said loudly.   
In my time with Ian he never had raised his voice before.

But he was drunk. And wanted an answer.

My eyes filled with tears as he began to raise his voice.  
During that four days I hadn't cried, but now I had to.  
I hadn't thought that my parents would search for me and I had thought that Ian would be more understanding.  
So I cried. Much.  
I began to cry and couldn't stop.  
I cried about my thoughts. I cried about my mother. About my father. About my presence here.  
Maybe I could have been happy if I would have been born into another family.  
I could have had a life which would have been filled with joy.  
I would have lived in a good family.  
Maybe I would have had a sister or a brother and we would have played together.  
Maybe my mum would have shown me how to use makeup and we would have had fun together.  
Maybe my dad would have shown me how to play baseball. Maybe I would have played father, mother, child with my sister. And maybe, just maybe, I would have been loved.  
But my life was different.  
I envied everyone who seemed happy in their families.  
I even envied those who seemed to be as poor as a mouse. Because they were loved. And I was not.  
'I can live without money but I can't live without love'.  
By Judy Garland.  
'Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is'. By unknown.  
'Money can buy you a bed, but not a good night's sleep, a house but not a home, a companion but not a friend'.  
There are so many quotes about love.  
And so many about money.  
I had money.  
The thing I didn't have and that I most wanted was love. So I gave everything up to find my luck. My peace. My life.  
'I can live without money but I can't live without love'. I cried because of it.  
Because I realized how much I had to fight in my life. And I wanted, I needed it to get better.  
I used to feel better after I cried. But not this time.  
Not until Ian wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against his sweating chest.  
I didn't object.  
Of course it wasn't my first hug I received.  
But it was the first one that counted. That made me feel better.  
And I cried even more. Ian held me. I don't know why he did it. Maybe I reminded him of his daughter.  
Maybe he needed someone who was there for him.  
And he showed that he was there for me.  
So I cried. More than I had ever cried before.  
Maybe you could call me weak. Some do.  
Others say the opposite. And I don't know what to think. They say that I'm weak because  
I let her oppress me for such a long time. But I was a kid. I didn't know what to say or think.  
I don't know it now either but I'm not a child anymore.  
The others say that I'm strong that I could live with her for that long. And that I told her that I'd go. And that I went.  
I personally thanked every person who said this to me.

Because it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to me.  
Who doesn't want to be strong? Tough? And that's exactly what Ian said.  
"Ya strong, kiddo. Doin' good there.", he whispered into my ear, his breath smelling like a trash can.  
"Just keep fightin'", he added. "Let it all out".  
And I did.  
After a while Ian stood up and came back a few minutes later with an ice bucket and a spoon in his hands.  
"'Heard young girls like you like ta eat ice cream.", he said, sitting down next to me and reaching out to give me the cookie dough ice bucket.  
I smiled slightly. I must have looked awful.  
But Ian didn't say a word.  
He only smiled at me, nodding his head slightly. Understanding.  
"Thank you", I croaked out. For the first time in my life I said thank you and really meant it.  
I was thankful to Ian because he cared about me.  
Because he accepted me the way I was.  
I dried my tears and took the ice cream.  
Ian took the remote and switched channels. And we watched silently.  
After a while I felt so much better.  
It was like a blanket was lifted from over my head and I could finally breathe.  
From my fifth day with Ian it only got better and better.

We made jokes together, we laughed together, we lived together.  
I only remembered my mother once or twice a day.  
It was like a father-daughter relationship with Ian.  
He was kind, he was loving and he was funny.  
Ian tried to help me as much as he could. And I began to thaw. I talked every day, I smiled every day and I stopped being that lazy.  
I helped Ian in the kitchen, I read my favorite book to him and we watched TV together.  
I even helped him in the garden.  
It wasn't dry and dirty anymore, we had planted little plants and flowers to make the house look more lively.  
I helped Ian to paint the house again. Since it was made out of wood it wasn't too solid and it rained through the cracks in the wall every once in a while. I helped him to varnish it so neither wind nor water could get through.  
One day Ian went to go grocery shopping. And I stayed at home since we both thought I should hide for a little while.  
So no one would alarm the police.  
I stayed inside the house since I had nothing to do. Nothing except for watching TV.  
My mobile phone laying beside me.  
I knew about the risks of the police tracking my phone so I had bought a new card with a new number, they couldn't track me down.  
Ian had logged me into the wifi server so I could do whatever I wanted. I stayed like this for over an hour.  
But after a while it began to become boring.

So I did the only thing I thought would be practical.  
I began to sort the beer bottles.  
Most of them were empty but in between there were full bottles lying around.  
I decided to work myself from one end of the beer trail to the other.  
Finding a giant plastic box I began to put the empty bottles in it.  
It was torture.  
There were so many bottles that stank to heaven and in between there were glass pieces on the ground.  
But I found new boxes and put the bottles in.  
The house had four rooms. The bathroom, the entrance 'hall', the kitchen/living room and his bedroom.  
When I got to the next room I opened every curtain that hang there to let the sun through.  
I went from room to room.  
And in the end I had thirteen boxes full of beer bottles. One of those was full of beer cans.  
I tried to clean the house as much as possible.  
Ian and I had already tried to clean the bathroom so I only opened every window in the house and put every bottle in its place in the box.  
I took the boxes outside and lay them on the freshly cleaned veranda.  
Then I went back in the house. It looked and smelled a lot better.  
I smiled slightly and continued to work.  
I went to Ian's bedroom and tried to clean it.  
I put every flannel in it's place and folded every jeans and sweatpants I found.  
And I put them in the closet. It looked unstable and old.

On the floor next to it you could clearly see scratch marks. The closet must have been moved to the middle of the wall.  
It looked weird. On the wall next to it there was a mark where it had stood before, like when you have a painting in the middle of the wall and you put it down.  
There's always a shadow of it like a mark on the wall.  
Like the shadow of the past.  
That's exactly what was on the wall of Ian's bedroom.  
So I tried to push it back to where it had stood before.  
It was quite heavy. Which didn't surprise me since it was made out of solid wood.  
I stood there in front of the closet and was surprised by what I saw. There was a door behind the closet.  
But why did Ian cover a door in his own house?  
No one came here. And why would he do it anyways? It's not like he had anything to hide.  
The door was brown, as the rest of the doors in Ian's house. But there was something unusual about it.  
There was this aura that made it special.  
The aura of the forbidden. The sadness. Maybe even grief.  
I know it's hard to believe that I felt all of this standing in front of the door but I think I felt it. To the core.  
The door wasn't even locked, since the closet was stood in front of it.  
I had to pull it open.  
Once I did, the smell of something rotten embraced me like a butterfly net embraces a butterfly.  
I nearly gagged.

The air was so thick and heavy that I had problems breathing. I let my gaze fall onto the wall of the room.  
It was painted pink with golden flowers on the bottom of it. Pink cupboards held children's books, there was a white closet and a bed.  
On the bed lay a corpse.  
It was weird that the corpse wasn't the first thing I noticed. But on the other hand I didn't want to notice it.  
It was a woman, not a child.  
She lay there, in the middle of the bed, beautifully terrifying.  
Her long hair was spread over the pillows, it was dead and thin. Her hands were put together neatly on her stomach.  
You could see every bone in her body.  
Her lips were chapped and faded and you could see every tooth in her mouth.  
The cheek bones were sticking out of her face and her eyes were closed, but rolled into her eye sockets. I couldn't make out their color.  
She wore jeans and a crop-shirt, which were much too wide due to the loss of weight.  
The corpse wasn't the worst thing.  
Neither were the few flies that buzzed around her head in confusion or the fact it seemed like her head had been smashed in.  
The worst for me were the grubs that fed upon her flesh.  
I had seen corpses in dozens of movies or TV shows.  
But I never imagined the smell to be so extreme.  
The smell hurt.  
My stomach dropped, my head felt like it was spinning and my mouth went dry.

Ian had killed his wife.  
That was the only reasonable explanation for this.  
And it wasn't even reasonable.  
But before I thought of this I felt emptiness.  
I couldn't breathe. The air was too heavy.  
When I made a few steps towards the corpse I hear cracking noises.  
I looked down and saw dead flies lying all around the floor.  
I couldn't move my foot without crashing them.  
All those flies had lived through the corpse of Ian's wife. Generations had fed upon it.  
I was so disgusted that I nearly didn't hear the entrance door screeching open and Ian calling.  
I was traumatized.  
All I could see was the grubs and the piece of forehead that was clearly smashed in.  
It was the most frightening thing I had ever experienced.  
I turned around and Ian stood right in the doorframe of his bedroom. I gulped loudly.  
And he stared me down. With the blood bags heavy under his eyes and his breath rigid.  
"Sophie...", he began to say. He never called me Charlotte. Even though he knew my full name he never called me by my first name. I was thankful for that.  
"I want to go", I breathed out. Ian stood in my way.  
If I could make him fall I could be able to make a run. I could steal his truck. And would be helplessly failing on how to drive.  
Ian's eyes went wide as he heard that. As if he would have never expected me to say something like that.

"I... I", he began to stutter. He was sweating even more than usual. "I can't let you go", he finished.  
And I had a shiver ran down my spine.  
I felt sick. Scared. Confused.  
I stood in the doorframe of the children's room, my back facing the corpse.  
I heard the flies behind me begin to get out of the room and into Ian's, finding the window and their freedom for the first time in their miserable little lives.  
I heard the chirping of the animals outside. And I heard Ian's heavy breathing.  
He held his hands up and it showed how much he was trembling. I was trembling too.  
From one moment to the other I was afraid of the only person I trusted.  
I looked up at him helplessly. "Please...", I only whispered. Ian looked like he was about to burst.  
His head was redder than I had ever seen it before.  
And that scared me too.  
I had so many tears in my eyes that I couldn't see clearly anymore.  
I had to blink a few times to get them to fall down my cheeks. I whimpered softly.  
I couldn't believe it.  
Ian had killed his wife. And he had lied to me.  
"It, it, it was an accident", he declared.  
But I only stared at him.  
I didn't know what to say neither did I want to say anything.

Ian stared at me. His eyes were watery too.  
I trusted him.  
In that situation I knew that Ian wouldn't hurt me. Because I knew Ian. He wouldn't hurt me.  
But I was still shocked.  
I couldn't get myself to speak. And I knew I wouldn't be able to. So the only thing I did was stare at him.  
"I... I couldn't tell you! You woulda thought I'm a monster", he explained to me. But I didn't think Ian was a monster.  
Because I only knew that I trusted him. And I knew that he would never hurt me.  
I just stood there, staring and tears falling down my cheeks. I was in shock.  
The image of his wife was branded inside my head.  
"I loved her, ya know...", he said to me.  
His voice broke at the end of his sentence.  
Tears were streaming down his face.  
Until now I had never seen a man cry.  
"It was an accident! 'Didn't mean ta do it.", he cried. "We", he began, but it was only a whisper. "We were arguing. She was hysterical, it was after our daughter was hit by the truck", he began again.  
"We were stood in the kitchen ", he told me. "'Nd she screamed at me. Said I killed our baby, she said. 'Nd I was drunk. 'T was the first time I was drunk. Ya know what I mean...", he told me. He meant that it was the first day he was constantly drunk.  
I nodded slowly. "She screamed at me. 'Nd I was angry. 'Coz she said those things to me... 'Couldn't take it 'nymore. 'Nd I hit her. Well, I slapped her.", he said to me.  
"Her head hit the counter", he told me and I could see he was even more trembling than before.  
"'Nd she fell. 'Couldn't call the police, ya know. They wouldn't a believed me", he continued. "'T was too late for an ambulance.

So I fed her. Nursed her, ya know. She was feverish and lay on the couch for three days. 'Nd then she died. 'Didn't say anything, she did. She couldn't. 'Bet it was much pain. So on the third day I gave her more painkillers than usually. 'Nd she died, ya know. She died peacefully. 'Didn't hurt a bit 'nymore. I didn't mena do it. Hit her, I mean. 'Was just too angry, I guess. I loved her , ya know. Still do.", he said and wiped his tears off of his face.  
You could hear the scratching noise the stubbles made on the rough skin of his hand.  
"'Put her in our baby's room. Thought she might like it there. 'Nd I sang to her. But when these beasts came to her body, I couldn't do it anymore. 'Couldn't do it. So I put the closet in front of the room. So I didn't have ta see her 'nymore.", he explained.  
"I couldn't call the cops. They wouldn't a believed me.", he ended. And stared at me. His eyes sent shivers down my spine. The brokenness of this man was too much for me.  
I couldn't help him.  
And I couldn't say anything.  
"I can't let you go", he said to me. That wasn't true. What he meant was that he didn't want to.  
He knew that I wouldn't call the cops. I couldn't, and I wouldn't have done it anyways.  
"Yes you can", I whispered, my voice cracking.  
And Ian nodded slowly. His eyes turned downwards to the floor. He steered at it for more than a minute and finally stepped out of the way.  
Looking directly at me. "Go", he whispered.  
And I ran. I didn't look back before I got out of the house.  
I didn't even went to the couch in the living room to get my belongings. I couldn't. I just had to get out of there.  
While I was running I wiped the tears off my face.

When I finally was out in the open and a few meters away from the house I looked back.  
I saw Ian standing there. Staring at me.  
I bent down to take my shoes off.  
I didn't have anything else and I was bare footed on the hot, dry ground. But I couldn't stand the smashed under my trainers anymore.  
I left them there and made a few more steps away from the house.  
I again turned around and saw Ian still standing there.  
"Thank you", I whispered softly.  
He didn't hear me say it. But I had to.  
I had to thank Ian for what he did for me. And for letting me go.


	4. Chapter 3

"What's a girl like you doing here so lonely at this hour?", asked a female voice right behind me.   
I turned around and saw a young woman, in her twenties, standing there. 

She was definitely a hooker.   
Her slim body was wrapped in a furry animal-print coat under which she wore a high waisted leather skirt which only went to just about a third of her thighs. Her dark red lace crop shirt gave an insight to her cleavage and her lips were coated in red lipstick that matched with her shirt.   
Her hair was dark brown with a tendency to black and it was slightly sweaty. 

Even though she made herself look cheap she was beautiful.   
And I was slightly taken aback by her stunning looks.   
"Umh. I have nowhere else to go", I told her, turning in my seat to look at her properly. 

The diner was ugly, like most American diners are.   
The table I sat on was a light silver-grey color and the stool was painted in some kind of light blue.   
With the white lamps that poured their cold white light all over us like milk it built up a surreal atmosphere.   
But maybe that was also because I hadn't slept in days. 

It was the truth.   
It had been three days since I had run from Ian.   
I had slept on the streets. Well, I had napped there.   
On the streets there is an unspoken rule, never truly sleep.   
Everything could happen to you. 

I didn't have a clock or anything like it, but even at the slightest noise I woke up.   
So you can figure that I looked like shit. 

"Where are your shoes?", she motioned to my bare feet, grinning and showing me her beautiful slightly yellow teeth.   
To be honest, after hours of walking on hot, biting dirt and asphalt and living in the streets I had lost the feeling in my toes.   
I only felt that the plastic floor of the diner was slightly cold.   
My feet looked like I had lived with the pigs. My whole body looked like I had lived with the pigs. 

I shrugged my shoulders.   
"I took them off", I told her softly.   
In those few days I hadn't eaten much.   
Most of my findings were taken out of the trash can.   
But I had to eat.   
And I was lucky enough to find five dollars.   
That's why I was here now. 

"Wanna eat something real?", asked the girl and sat down in front of me, uninvited.   
I looked up at her and she smiled as she motioned the waitress to come over.   
I continued staring at her, not minding the waitress in her bright red uniform-dress.   
I couldn't see all of her face, because strands of my hair that had fallen out of my queue and had matted themselves there were hindering me from seeing her fully.   
I didn't bother to push them out of my face. 

"Two times the blueberry pancakes, please", the young woman ordered.   
Yet alone the thought of pancakes made my insides do a happy dance.   
Out of the corner of my eyes I could see the waitress looking at her watch.   
"We don't do pancakes anymore. We do them until ten a'clock", she said with a bored tone in her voice, letting the bubble of the chewing gum she ate plop.   
"Then what do you do?", asked the invader of my privacy.   
The waitress shrugged her shoulders.   
"Fucking hell", she murmured and stormed off.   
"Frank! You gotta do two blueberry pancakes!", she shouted angrily. 

The person in front of me smirked victoriously.   
"You homeless or something?", she asked me.   
"Does it look like I am?", I fired back at her.   
"Geez! Calm down!", she laughed at me, stretching her hand out for me to take.   
"I'm Jennifer. Jennifer Michaelsson.", she presented herself to me. "Jen will do", she added quickly.   
"Charlotte Sophie Ada Montgomery", I nodded at her.   
After a while I even shook her hand.   
"Well hallelujah", Jen laughed again.   
"Choose whichever name you prefer", I added.   
I watched the waitress behind the counter play with her phone.   
I sighed and turned back to Jennifer.   
I didn't have a phone anymore. 

"Great to meet you, Sophie!", she said and took her hand back to her lap.   
I didn't want to know where that hand had already been today, but I was no better.   
"What are you doing here? I don't mean this shit-hole, I mean the town.", she asked me.   
"Why do you want to know?", I asked back.   
She smirked slightly.   
"You don't seem too bad. A little grumpy, but I figured you haven't slept much the last few days?", she guessed.   
I nodded slowly.   
"I'm actually debating wether or not to take you home with me", she told me. 

My eyes were now glued on her.   
I needed to sleep. And everywhere was better than here.   
"You're lucky I don't have anything else to do today", she smiled at me. "I don't normally do this but you reek of adventure.", she said and breathed in deeply.   
"Yeah. That and something else", she laughed slightly.   
Her laugh sounded like as if there were little bells ringing in the distance.   
It was pretty, as pretty as she was. 

I heard the weak clinging of the plates that were put in front of us.   
"Anything else?", asked the bored waitress.   
Jen only shook her head and the woman disappeared behind the counter again. 

"So... you wanna live with me?", Jen asked me.   
I wanted to sleep. I needed to sleep and Jen wasn't exactly the scariest person I'd ever seen.   
So I nodded. "Yeah. Please?", I asked nicely.   
I now felt shabby. So dirty, tired and worn out.   
I wanted to take a shower and I wanted to sleep.   
I didn't want to comb my hair though, because I didn't think that I could ever get the knots out of it. It would hurt much. 

Jen smirked at me and nodded. "M'kay. I can take you in. I have a spare bedroom, actually", she told me.   
I was surprised, to say the least.   
Jen didn't seem like the person to have a second bed, yet a second bedroom.   
Since I had ran away from the place I used to call my home I hadn't slept in a bed.   
Ian let me sleep on the couch, but that was it. 

I bet my eyes widened. That's why Jen's smirk grew wider.   
"Eat!", she said to me and I finally looked down at my plate.   
Jen had something enchanting in her.   
Once you looked at her you had to continue staring.   
I never looked that closely at women, but Jen was mesmerizing.   
I nodded and began to eat. 

I had eaten better pancakes.   
Our cook used to do them on Sundays.   
But it was food. And I needed it.   
I finished them off rather quickly and then watched Jennifer eat and finished my drink. 

"Where're you from?", she asked, her mouth stuffed with pancakes.   
I shook my head. I didn't want to answer.   
Jen finished too and we drove to her apartment. 

Even though I was so very tired I remember the scene in the surreal diner in detail.   
I could remember Jennifer as if she would stand in front of me.

I could even remember her apartment as if it was yesterday.   
It was cleaner than Ian's house. 

There were no beer bottles and it didn't smell like alcohol at all.   
The rooms were warm and especially because there were only three rooms the apartment had a cozy atmosphere.   
A bedroom, a kitchen and a tiny living room.  
It was about half the size of Ian's home. And it was perfect. 

The room was held in a dark grey color and the furniture fitted perfectly. There were a few clothes lying around, but it was nothing like Ian's house.   
Ian's house was exceptionally dirty. The beer bottles, the smell and not to forget the corpse. 

I thought of Ian much in the time before Jen.   
The days in the slums. 

But surprisingly enough I never dreamed of the corpse.  
I could remember it forever but I never dreamed about it. I never had even one nightmare. 

I guess that if most people encounter a corpse, they automatically dream about it. Seeing those dead eyes and pale lips over and over again.   
But I didn't. I guess it was the shock of the situation, the scent and the ultimately thick air that drove me to abandon the place. 

I understood Ian.   
He was one of the kindest persons I ever got to know.   
But what had happened to him and how he reacted had made him a cripple. Not physically, but emotionally. 

He was nearly dead inside.   
And thinking that I could fix him made him shameless, in my eyes. No one could fix people as broken as us. 

Jen watched me look around the flat.   
“Yeah I know. It's not much. But I like it anyways”, she shrugged her shoulders and let herself fall onto the dark purple couch, looking at me. 

“Maybe you should go ‘n take a shower. I'm not judging or anything, but I'd definitely go have one. You smell”, she smirked at me.   
Her eyes glimmered teasingly as she said that. 

Surprisingly, I snickered.   
My mother always told me not to snicker, it wasn't ladylike.   
But the days that I listened to my mother were over. 

Jen laughed at me and shook her head. “You're fucking weird”, she said and I watch her hands as she peeled the nail polish from her right pointer finger.   
“Off you go!”, she laughed and hinted to the bathroom door with her chin. 

As I finally got there and entered the room, I stood in a small but lovely decorated bath.   
“I'll go get some clothes for you”, said Jen and I turned around to see her leaning in the frame of the bathroom door. 

She closed the door and I went for it, ridding myself of the last bit of mud I could find.   
I was in the shower for at least half an hour but when I finally emerged from it, I felt like a whole different person. 

I wasn't the sick, desperate little girl anymore, I was a young woman looking for an adventure. 

Looking in the mirror I could see all the things that had happened to me. It was as if I could see the corpse, the slums and my mother all through looking in my eyes.   
The eyes are after all the windows to the soul. 

I brushed my hair, which was a hard and even more exhausting work and got into the clothes Jen had set out for me. 

It was a very revealing shirt, all black and a dark red satin bra underneath. There was a boxer short as well.   
Apparently this was my pajamas.   
The bra was too large, but I didn’t care.   
But the strangest thing was the thong. 

I don't know if one should mention those kind of things in stories, but I do. The thong was… strange.   
I had never done anything the slightest bit naughty, so wearing a thong was like praying to the devil at church. 

I turned and stared at myself in the mirror. And I was beautiful.   
Even though I was entirely dressed like a hooker, I felt so good I couldn't stand it.   
After those few days under the bridge I felt like goodness now.   
I opened the bathroom door and stood in the entrance of the living room, looking for Jen. 

She came out of the kitchen, a bucket of ice and a long spoon in her hand.   
Jenni saw me and stopped walking. She looked me up and down. 

“Fuck. You look hot”, was what she said. 

This was my first encounter with Jennifer Michaelsson.   
And after that it seemed to me as if we never left reaching distance. 

To say that Jen and I became friends is an understatement.   
We did everything together, except for her job.   
Usually she would go out at 5 and be home until 10, maybe later. 

And I got used to it.   
We used to sleep in together, most of the times in the same bed.   
We made breakfast together, we went shopping together and we lived together.   
Jennifer shared her life with me and I listened. 

This is what I usually do.   
I needed their financial support, but I gave them something in return.   
An ear and the feeling that some finally understands you. 

The feeling that would finally bring satisfaction into your life.   
The satisfaction everyone so desperately needs. 

Some people try to hide it by pretending as if they need something else, but in the end we all need the same.   
We need to be understood.   
In the end we're all just herd animals and have to be, need to be understood.   
It's a primal need, like so many others. 

Humans always want something.   
It depends on the person, but once they get what they want, they want something else.   
It's easy, really, but explaining isn't. 

I always think this way, but most of the people simply try to hide it.   
Some of them are good at it, others aren't.   
But the important thing is that we all have the need for sharing.   
Except for me.   
Well, not sharing in the way of talking, rather writing. 

I did not share anything about my life with her.   
Not Ian, not her. Nor anyone else.   
Some people need to talk about their grief, others need to hide it. 

I learned so much about Jen, it felt as if I was her sister.   
But I was the one who she trusted.   
This was far more than just a sister by blood, I was her partner. 

I was more than just a sister to her. 

The days went by and I lived with Jen.   
And I loved every last one of them.   
But the d-day, the dreadful day was still to come. 

Her father was really sick and so he lived in a house for demented people.   
Jen worked day and night to get the money the required to keep him there.   
That was why she worked that hard.   
She didn't have a high school degree or any diplomas of some sorts, but she was good enough to get around. 

And she was the perfect company for me.   
She talked and talked and never asked question.   
Maybe she knew who I was. Maybe she didn't.   
I never asked and she never told. So we kept quiet about it. 

Talking was not something we both kept up for long.   
Well it depended on the day, some days we could talk for hours on end, others we didn't talk at all.   
We just sat together and, like magic, read each others thoughts.   
It sounds unbelievable that people can know each other this way, only after a few days.   
But to us it was just reality. 

We were together and that was what counted.   
We saw each other without any prejudices or ideas a society could lay upon us.   
Because both of us were alone and both of us searched company. 

But, as I said, Jen definitely talked a lot more than I did.   
I just didn't feel comfortable doing so.   
Having your parents telling you to shut up your whole life makes you this way.   
But let's take aside the parents thing.   
I didn't think about them. 

I lived.  
And that was what I was searching for.   
I wouldn't want to talk about how I felt before, my life a tidy mess, but I guess you get the picture.   
I wanted to feel more, to be more than just a person being labeled down to nothing. 

This was it, I decided next to Jennifer.   
I was living something I wanted to live.   
I wanted to be special, not in a bad or snobby way but in a good, healthy and lively way. 

Jen made me feel like it.   
She made me feel how exciting life could be.   
How exciting life is. 

She took me to clubs, me wearing her clothes.   
Her clothes were nearly always tight and short, but I got used to it and wouldn't change it for the world.   
Because they were her clothes.   
They smelled like her. They felt like her. 

Jennifer was my idol.   
The life in a person.   
Even though her father made her problems, her work was exhausting and tiring and she herself was slightly superficial, she was still life.   
She was an example of an extraordinarily ordinary person. 

She was beautiful, alive and in her fears and sorrows, she was well.   
I was curious, and she satisfied me.   
In any way you could emphasize the sentence above. 

Jen was special.   
Even though she seemed normal she was not. To me, she wasn't. 

Her work was tiring, but she always kept smiling at me.   
She kept being nice to me because somewhere deep down inside of her she knew she loved me. 

The only problem was the way she loved me.   
Being a teenager and even a college student there is a great room of tolerance.   
And they say adolescence is to try out different things. 

Such as building and having a relationship.   
I never had any friends.   
I went to school, but those people would never be my friends.   
I hated them, they hated me and we just couldn't stand each other. 

Ian and Jen were people I understood.   
I was always good at reading people, at feeling what they felt and at listening.   
This is what I call love to the basic human nature.   
I loved everything about people.   
Their minds, their souls, as far as there even is one, and their physical attractions. 

And of course I liked Jennifer.   
She had an interesting character, was just simply human and she was so beautiful.   
From the first time I saw her I was mesmerized, and this state held on as long as Jennifer was in a room with me. 

Talking about it this sounds so utterly creepy.   
I wasn't examining her.   
She wasn't a lab rat of some sort.   
I didn't stare at her in the dark. 

I just lived with her, soaking up every information I could possibly get.   
I was living with the perfect imperfection of humanity.   
She watched me and I watched her. 

Whenever she watched me there was this indefinable sadness in her eyes.   
At least for the last few days I lived with her.   
Jen was everything for me and I felt like I was everything for her. 

But the world is the world and as fascinating as I think it is it is still horrifyingly cruel. 

I didn’t care to tell her much about me but she knew.   
She knew I was on the run and that I was ‘a bitch to begin with’, as she called it. That I didn’t talk much and that I cared less.   
But that was exactly what she liked about me, at least she told me so. 

She liked my timidity but my strong will power. And she liked my fascination for her.   
My fascination for her was indeed what kept me to live in her place. And the clothes.   
I liked her in her clothes. And I liked the style of clothing even though a little slutty, still beautiful. 

My only problem was the time she went out. I hated when she left but the worst thing was my imagination. The image of her sucking off an alien person.


End file.
